MULTNOMAH - Illuminated Shape-Note Score & mp3 of a read-thru

I wrote this song after I had been singing in Multnomah County, Oregon. & many Portland Singers came down to San Carlos, California, for the All-California Sacred Harp Convention Convention. & afterwards to a new music reading at Mark Miller's house in Berkeley, which was the first time this song has been read thru. Only the first & last verses are in this mp3 of the reading. The first, third, & fifth verses are from Isaac Watts. The illumination on the score is by Pele. Download a pdf of the score here.

MULTNOMAH

Fools never raise their thoughts so high
Like brutes they live, like brutes they die
Like grass they flourish till thy breath
Blasts them in everlasting, lasting death.

And congressmen who feign their faiths
Elected, spread the empty grace,
Like eggplants, poison till their fried,
They are forgotten past the last divide.

But I shall share a glorious part
When grace hath well refined my heart
And fresh supplies of joy are shed
Like holy oil, to cheer, to cheer my head.

All twelve dimensions will collapse!
Perceptions read omniscient maps,
My savior on Columbian soil
Will swap our peasant rags for garments royal.

Then I shall see & hear & know.
All I desired & wished below
And ev'ry pow'r find sweet employ
In that eternal world of, world of joy.

The Responses To Each Existing Text Message I Have Recieved, Historically

First, I would like to thank all of you who made this possible: that great wheel of fortune, love's precious flame, "Tahoe" Hank, Ms. Dorchestershire, J. Recar, H. Vaughn, and Virgin Mobile.

1. Yes, This is Bill Richardson
   
2. Yes, it has been too long.
3. Portland sure is no Philadelphia.
4. You appear to have set your train into a world of no telephone reception. I am sitting in a yellow chair.
5. No, unfortunately I have to work tonight.
   
6. Great! See you soon!
7. The Gov is doing well. He is more like a King 'round here. He dresses like a cowboy when it is appropriate.
8. Okay.
9. Gild my thighs with flaxen Shetland pies. Take the scrub brush, what will they say about us on t.v.?
10. And a beard to match.
11. Thanks.
12. You are the truest patriot I know. Eli Levin gave his W $600 to the Communist Party.

P.S. Click picture above for further information.

List: Songs We Sang

I am in Portland, at their lovely huge old library with tall pink walls. Last night, I met my friend Mrs Smith & hiked for most of the afternoon in the country where those tall waterfalls go into the Columbia River. It's nice round there. It threatened rain, but we decided to put up our tent & be optimistic. No veggie dogs were roasted on no campfire. We hid in our tent with a box of wine for the entire night while impossible amounts of water fell from the sky. At one point, we made a dash to get the capo & the ukulele. If the omnipotent gods of music are curious & read blogs, here are some of the songs we sang:

-Longer boats are coming to win us (Cat Stevens)
-Where do the children play? (Cat Stevens)
-Indiana (David Yazbek)
-TOXICODENDRON
-EL CERRITO (coming soon to http://www.itwaslost.org/!!)
-some of our old Shakespeare numbers
-A la clare fontaine
-Dancing with the Mountains (John Denver)
-Others I forget about

Tonight, there will be some Portland Sacred Harp, followed by fire twirling at Reed College. Outward! Stop, drop & roll!

Sam Amidon's blog Speak, Peppery points us to these existential Garfield Without Garfield comics:

Travis John

And a healthy welcome to Mr Brains Aha!, newest contributer, specializing in Sports & Leisure. Just a few orange questions from the cards: How many stumps are there in a cricket wicket? What game does the New York Institute for the Investigation of Rolling Spheroids specialize in? What's a fruit machine? Find out soon, with compelling reports from Mr Aha! Sports & Leisure correspondent. His first report about soccer is right below.

I wanted to post some of my shape-note arrangements, but I'm having trouble converting Finale Notation .mus files into PDFs or JPEGs. Anyway, I've been writing &/or arranging some sacred folk choral music - The following recording is me singing all five parts, accompanied by a my Yamaha PSR-500M synth, to be used only to get an idea of the song & what it might sound like with a larger group. I apologize if a creepy quintet of my voice induces any heartburn or insomnia.



"Travis John" is an arrangement of a 2003 song by Kate Power, which I heard Tracy Grammer sing at the Freight & Salvage a few weeks ago (her version is on that myspace link). Power wrote the song from the point of view of a Portland neighbor of hers, a young man who died in Iraq in 2003, who she claimed came to her as a spirit to help her compose the song. Grammer sings it alongside several songs about war & passes out copies of the song to help spread it. My arrangement adds some Sacred Harp harmonies & rhythms, but a bit more square, dissonant & modal. I'll post a down-loadable copy of the score when I figure out how to do that.

Under a weeping willow tree, you planted roses.
There with my family, eternal ghost is.
I am a boy, full of promise, full of freedom.
Now the joy is dead & done, I am gone.

La Niña

Listen to me, hobos, with your feet not with your ears:
The salvation train no longer goes thru Portland:
One beer-swilling infant caused war for two thousand years,
Like dried-up camel tears,
Next century's preachers will drop from your face, & be forever banned.

The winter is past due, the fine is tremendous,
My love is a dodecahedron upon a fractal mountain,
The prophetess' jaw is locked up, but perhaps she just has Tetanus,
A virgin except for her clitoris,
She does not know the silent futurity, eternal jail for the whisky fountain.

Fall like amber locks, your robe torn off like lust & descent:
The wind hears you partying with another man in Orange County.
This rotten paradise was never meant to be misspent,
I have forgotten to pay the rent,
Pulsing beneath her t-shirt are several answers, lost booty, lost bounty.

You have to come up before you go down on the earth.
Do you remember that nice man with weird hair who killed his monster baby?
She told him it wasn't the antichrist, just more trouble than it was worth:
The birth of a subversive reversal,
So they added an eighth lane to the flaming freeway, no fin whale will judge their infamy.

Hobos & tramps, you need to ask me more questions, I miss her,
We are sober in different ways, missing in America's décolletage.
Pillaging & taxing, & surging with grief, & raped by a dinosaur incisor,
None the wiser until I kiss her,
Your eardrums beating with these vibrations on hell's watch.

The rain is over - Are you paying attention, Miranda? - come ask her apes,
What to bring as a present for a child who will end materialism?
She told him this wasn't the incorporeal rapture, just a stain on the images of cityscapes,
Put those walking feet toward stamping grapes,
And help me celebrate our victory, the chiefest beloved in Folsom Prism.